An Ad for the Zeitgeist

Why Apple's new ad hit a nerve

In 1984, Apple launched its now-iconic Macintosh ad. In it, a female jogger in red shorts and a white tank top throws a hammer into a large screen showing an authoritarian figure giving a speech. The jogger is juxtaposed with an army of drab drones. Her clothes, and the Apple logo that flashes on the screen at the end, are the only elements of colour in an otherwise monotonous, monochrome world.

Now, in 2024, Apple has launched another ad for its new iPad that also touched a nerve. In this one, a hydraulic press crushes musical instruments, buckets of paint, and a poor little emoji. When the press finally lifts up, what's left is the new, very thin and sleek iPad. The reaction to this new iPad was swift and universal – people hate it.

The reason why this new ad touched a nerve is because it so accurately captured the angst that many people feel about the social impact of technology. I would go as far as say that this angst goes beyond just technology. We feel like we're losing something human and replacing it with more efficient and economical but less human and less beautiful alternatives.

In 1984, Apple was bringing colour to a monochrome world. In 2024, Apple is flattening a world of colour and texture into a sleek and texture-less slab of glass and metal. In this sense, the new ad is actually quite brilliant... perhaps not as a way to help Apple sell its products, but as a metaphor for the technological world we live in. It is undeniably a good thing that this $1000 piece of glass can empower anyone to create art, but it is equally undeniable that something beautiful is lost in the process.

This same trend is at work in all areas of our lives. In urban design and architecture, we have replaced texture and warmth with materials and structures that feel more like a sterile science lab than a home. Our highly efficient globalized economy can deliver us cheap goods from all over the world, at the expense of never knowing who has made them and how and at what cost. Even our relationships are now mediated through screens, likes, and emojis. Worse still, in this globalized world, there are seldom pockets that manage to escape these transformations. In centuries past, the human world was a rich tapestry of diverse cultures and practices. While this is still the case to some extent, the world is more uniform than ever.

Life is a game of trade-offs. Whatever we win inevitably comes with associated costs. Accepting the trade-offs that come with modernity, however, is much harder given the fact that they're so global and so inescapable. We're collectively expressing this angst in a variety of ways. Sooner or later, it will need to be resolved. This is the cost of living in interesting times.